Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

Who didn’t think I would see this one? But fust, sum pwevews.

LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER–THE CRADLE OF LIFE–Or, Raiders Of The Lost Tomb. Really, guys. It’s obvious that this is basically a COMPLETE ripoff of Raiders. There’s even a shot of a guy with a melting face and a drawing of a couple of guys lifting the box, Ark-like, over their heads. All the way down to using the line, “A weapon more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The only difference is that it has a 00 sensibility, which of course means that it’s all action and no substance.

I take back anything I may have said about this being different from the first one. It’s going to suck just as bad, if not worse. But Angelina’s nipples are more prominent this time.

HOW TO DEAL–Who told Mandy Moore that we needed more of her in movies? (UERGH!! I didn’t mean to be cute there.) And who told the producers that we needed more of these sappy teen dramas where the girl learns how to love because of the new boy in town. And who told them that we needed more androgynous guys who look almost exactly like their female co-stars?

Mandy’s cute and all, but she doesn’t have a whole lot of talent and her movies freakin’ bomb. Why is she still making movies where she doesn’t get naked? The world may never know.

FREAKY FRIDAY–Yet another Disney remake starring yet another actress who is trying to come back yet again. This time, though, it’s Jamie Lee Curtis as the mom and Lindsay Lohan (The Parent Trap) in the role that made Jodie Foster, um, a kid-movie star.

Besides the fact that Jamie is starting to look her age, this movie has nothing interesting about it. Skip it.

THE WHOLE TEN YARDS–Did we need a sequel to the 2000 near-hit movie with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry? I didn’t think so. I don’t really care where these guys are right now. The first one was good for one thing: seeing Amanda Peet’s tits blowing in the wind. This time we probably won’t even get that AND we have to put up with Kevin Pollack in bad old make-up playing a mob boss who is after Bruce. Whatever. Skip it.

MATCHSTICK MEN–Or, Paper Moon: Neurotic Boogaloo. This one stars Nicolas Cage as a con man (er, “artist”) who finds out that he has a 14 year old daughter. He and his partner (Sam Rockwell) now have to integrate her into their cons. Add to this the fact that he is agoraphobic and obsessive compulsive and you have a wacky Ridley Scott comedy!

I’ll see it because I respect Ridley. Can’t say much about Nic at this point. Will this role be as interesting as Adaptation? Probably not. But he’s working for a real director, so maybe we’ll see sparks, albeit dim ones.

Now, bok to my mooovie.

It’s 2003 and John Connor (Nick Stahl) is 22. He’s survived two terminator attacks (although he was only truly alive for one) and hopes that his worries are over. They thwarted the Big One last time, but was it for the last time?

Apparently not, because Warner Brothers needed to make more money.

This time there’s a new Terminator after John. She’s a T-X (Kristanna Loken) and she’s even more advanced than the T-1000 last time out.

(By the way, I don’t remember the time travelers coming back in giant mirror balls. Is this what happened when Cyberdyne was destroyed in the last film? The time machine was changed to a disco way back machine?) She also has more than one target. She’s going after all of John’s cohorts before he even meets them. One of them is Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), a veterinarian and daughter to one of the commanders of SkyNet, the computer system that is going to run our military and, eventually, our world.

Pretty convenient that John stumbled into her clinic after having a motorcycle accident.

Which brings to mind this disturbing point: the savior of the human world breaks into a vet clinic to steal drugs. Not something you want to see your leaders doing.

Anyway, sometime after the T-X comes to town, our old buddy the T-800 comes back to protect John and Kate. Sure, he’s outdated and obsolete, but he does the best he can.

We get to see the first Terminator (remember those big machine gun robots in Robocop? And these are real…no CGI) and half of LA gets blowed up real good.

That seems to be the main premise here. Just blow shit up and let Arnie have a few good lines and jokes. Yes, he has jokes. The movie is actually quite funny. There’s a good running joke with the sunglasses. Arnie learns a thing or two from a gay stripper. And so and and so forth.

And therein lies the real problem with this movie (besides the fact that the whole movie is one giant plot hole–how did the government get ahold of the pieces of the old Terminators? Weren’t they all destroyed?): it’s a little too jokey. The last two (especially the first one) had a somberness to them that made them that much more frightening. Maybe this actually could happen. Jonathan Mostow (U-571, Breakdown) seems to almost not be taking things seriously enough. He only knows that he has taken the reigns of one of the biggest cash cows in movie history from James Cameron who didn’t want anything to do with continuing a series that had completely ended. (Except for the money he made off of selling the characters. Whore.)

The acting was alright for the most part. Nick and Claire are good actors in their own right, but they don’t have much to do but run and scream. Arnie is in fine form (better than he has been in years, actually) and looks like he may be able to kick ass just in time for the California gubanatorial race. And Kristanna is hot. Not so sure that she seems like too much of a threat considering the fact that, for the most part, she looks like she’s displaying the latest in red leather-wear, but it is cool to see her throw the Big Boy around.

The real stars here, though are the special effects. And they do deliver. There are a lot of chase scenes (of course) and they are all cool, with the stand out being the one with the crane truck near the beginning. The truly amazing thing about the film, though were the sound effects. Holy shit! They didn’t even have the surround turned on in my theatre (bastards!!!!) and the sound effects were still right in my face. Every crunch of bone and every crash of cement against Term-flesh pierced my ears like a sledgehammer. I don’t remember the sound effects in U-571, but they were apparently really good, too. These fuckin’ rocked, though.

Was this film as good as the other two? Hell, no. Does it destroy the memory of those two? Nah. I still love them and I’ll probably add this one to my collection when it comes out on DVD. I just won’t watch it as much.

Watch for a quick cameo by a character from the last movie. Run, you asshole! RUN!!!!

Everyone has said that there will be a Terminator 4 because of the way this one ends. They say that it actually ends with the idea that there HAS TO be a fourth film. I’m not so sure that I agree.

WATCH OUT!!! SPOILERS!!!! DON’T READ ANY FURTHER!!!!!

So, if the war is inevitable and this one ends with the bombs being dropped and John Connor seeming to take over the controls, isn’t that pretty much the end of the story? We don’t really have anywhere for his story to go except for into the war. And, while it would be cool to see the war, it would basically be The Matrix Revisited. And we don’t want that. I think we’ve seen enough of the war to keep us happy. And I don’t really want to know the outcome of the war.

Besides, if they send one more Terminators back and they somehow stop the war, then we have no more series. All of the movies have been invalidated, and that certainly wouldn’t be good. We don’t want the last shot of the Terminator series to be Pamela Ewing finding Bobby in the shower.

Leave it well enough alone, guys. No Terminator 4.